Driving Team In The Big Woods

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Driving Team In The Big Woods During the early days of lumbering in Pennsylvania, small water-powered, up-and­-down sawmills were located wherever the best trees stood in the stream valleys. Only the best, most accessible trees were cut and hauled to the mill by oxen or horses or occasionally floated on the stream which powered the mill. The saw­ed boards were then carried out of the woods on wagons or sleds to villages...
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Forest County: What Better Name?

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Forest County: What Better Name? Never a promised land, flowing with milk and honey, Northwestern Pennsylvania – a part of which later became Forest County­ – seemed to repel early settle­ment. Moravian missionary David Zeisberger, whose diary ac­count reveals the first intimate knowledge of the terrain and the Indian inhabitants, did not extol the area nor its original residents locals to any high degree. Like all...
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The ‘State’ of Allegheny

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The ‘State’ of Allegheny One of the first centers of the organization of the Re­publican party and scene of its first national conven­tion in February, 1856, Allegheny County was strongly for Lincoln in the presidential election of 1860. As the vote count proceeded, one of the leaders kept sending telegrams to Lincoln’s home in Illinois, keeping him up on the news that “Allegheny gives a majority of …...
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Jefferson County: Of Wilderness Tamed

Posted by on Nov 27, 2013 in | Comments Off on Jefferson County: Of Wilderness Tamed Jefferson County. Its hallmarks are as disparate as Thomas Jef­ferson and Punxsutawney Phil. Village names as dissimilar as Panic and Desire. Inhabitants as distinctive as Indian chief Cornplanter and Moravian missionary John Heckewelder. And a tranquil­ity which masks the turbu­lence of the nineteenth century’s lumber boom that spawned settlement and nu­merous ancillary industries....
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Shorts

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Shorts “From Ft. Wagner to Verdun: African Americans in the U.S. Military, 1863-1918,” is on view at the Civil War Library and Museum in Philadelphia. The exhibition, continuing through August 30, 1998, showcases artifacts, objects, and documents chronicling the experience of African Americans in mili­tary service from the Civil War through World War I. The Civil War Library and Museum is...
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History and Community: Pennsylvania’s First Lady Makes The Connection, An Interview with Michele M. Ridge

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on History and Community: Pennsylvania’s First Lady Makes The Connection, An Interview with Michele M. Ridge When flood waters threatened the Governor’s Residence in Harrisburg in January 1996, Michele M. Ridge quickly transformed herself from First Lady to First Curator of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Within hours, she assembled a team of National Guardsmen, weekend staff at the resi­dence, and specialists of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission to move endangered works of art,...
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The Piney Dam and Spillway on Clarion River

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Piney Dam and Spillway on Clarion River A tributary of the Allegheny River, the Clarion River snakes through northwestern Pennsylvania for 110 miles, draining the mountainous region of the Allegheny Plateau of the Ohio River watershed. For much of the nineteenth century, loggers used the river to raft lumber to market. Historians believe that James V. Cassatt piloted the last lumber raft on the river from Clarington, Forest County, to...
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Hatching Room at the Pennsylvania State Fish Hatchery

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Hatching Room at the Pennsylvania State Fish Hatchery Andrew Gregg Curtin (1817–1894) of Bellefonte, Centre County, is remembered in history as Pennsylvania’s “War Governor” for his ardent and early support of President Lincoln and the Union during the American Civil War, but he also played a critical role in conservation in the mid-nineteenth century by naming James J. Worrall the Commonwealth’s first Commissioner of Fisheries in 1866....
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